


Fireflower

by blackice



Category: Shí miàn mái fú | House of Flying Daggers (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Elemental Magic, Hua is played by Tony Leung, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 10:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12957030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackice/pseuds/blackice
Summary: The fairy tale goes: there is a doctor in the forest.





	Fireflower

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: despite the elemental magic, this is not an ATLA/LOK universe. if it was, though, Jin's the Sokka of the cast. right down to the death of his first love. /finger guns

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i.

The fairy tale goes: a god bestowed powers upon the people it loved best, letting them wield elements to their hearts’ delights. Another god realized how easily power corrupts, and how quickly the earth would be destroyed—drowned, scorched, torn open, blown to dust—and proceeded to impose some heavy limitations. So a man who once summoned a whirlwind was reduced to bending reeds, a woman who burned a palace could now only light pipes.

The fairy tale goes: the Tang dynasty’s predecessors have ensured its existence. The Tang dynasty’s present ruler is ensuring its demise. The House of the Flying Daggers prepares for the winds to change history, and their chosen catalyst is unknowingly walking to her death.

The fairy tale goes: there is a doctor in the forest.

ii.

A blizzard rages over Jin and Mei (he doesn’t want to think of it as _the corpse_ , or even _Mei’s dead body_ ), and he is beginning to feel a lot like nothing. Flurries of white powder swirl around pale cheeks, the summoned snow adorning their master with her very own burial shroud. Slowly, with crooked fingers, Jin sweeps them off. He has this weird, faint hope that he will die like this, with his fingers gracing Mei’s unmarred face. If he holds the position long enough, will he freeze into a statue?

Come spring, will he and Mei decay and be forever together, their bodies unburied?

In the distance: “Fool!”

Iii.

Hua has seen a lot of idiots in his life. Most of them had come from the House of Flying Daggers, back when it had been first established—the rebel faction had been stumbling from growing pains, wobbling back and forth with leadership and principles. Before Hua had sworn off being the faction’s personal physician, he’d been witness to a multitude of foolishly-gained injuries.

This actually tops them all, even the man who had a gash to the inner thigh due to, uh, sexual proclivities.

Across the meadow, his hut awaits. It will be a comfortable refuge from whatever hell the House is raising with the military. But for now, Hua’s attention is arrested by the huddled figure kneeling smack-center in the field, exposed to the elements without even a heavy cloak.

“Fool!” he shouts, trying to catch the figure’s attention. It’s difficult to make it sound good-natured when there is a _blizzard_ flaying the world apart.

iv.

A heavy cloak is draped around Jin’s shoulders, and all of a sudden, Jin is registering himself being dragged away from the corpse. He jolts at this and immediately throws himself against the solid hold trapping his elbows and waist.

Is that _his_ voice? Making the animalistic whines? Whimpering ‘no’?

“She’s dead, you fool!” says the stranger, moving inexorably forward no matter how much Jin digs his heels into soft, soft snow. “She’s been dead! You want to join her?”

Jin can barely say anything but ‘no’ and ‘please.’ A cohesive argument about why he _should_ join Mei in that beautiful winter wasteland escapes him. He can’t even cry, he’s—he’s actually cold. He’s freezing. This damn cloak is smothering the life back into his body, and it smells like smoke and herbs instead of clean, unscented snow.

He stumbles on, though. He’s accustomed to following someone dragging him along now.

v.

Hua’s home is a decently-sized hut partitioned into two rooms. One is a pantry for dried roots and medicinal plants. The other is everything else. When Hua staggers into his hut, the frozen lump of man still being hugged close to his chest, his home is dark and chilly.

But at least it’s dry.

Hua stations the man to sit a few feet from the fire pit and deems him harmless enough to go and start said fire without any false pretenses about being powerless. He sheds his own cloaks and homespun gloves and painstakingly restarts his dead bed of coals. While he is busy coaxing the flames to rise, Hua hears the faint sound of wheezing lungs.

That’s not the sound of a man who’s just a little frozen.

The flames are merrily jumping when Hua abandons them. He’s a little more preoccupied with stripping the stranger out of his sodden layers—oh. _Oh_. Hua stares at the gashes sluggishly beginning to bleed again with the proximity to warmth.

He glances up to see the distant look in the stranger’s eyes. He’s got the faraway stare of someone stuck in the past. So be it. Hua imagines the man wouldn’t like to be aware of being stitched back up and healed.

“What kind of fight were you in?” mutters Hua, folding the man’s clothes into a makeshift pillow and forcing him into a position of repose. He gets up to go root through his stash of herbs for a poultice, something to make dinner, and also a needle and spare thread. “I can only guess it was some lovers’ quarrel,” he adds, a little dry.

He’s coping with the thought of a severely wounded man who wanted to go freeze to death with a corpse. He’s allowed this.

-0-

_Alternate Beginning_

-0-

“Pick that up,” he says absently. “Put on a chair or something, let it dry out.” Hua spares the man a disparaging glance, just in case the message hadn’t been received, but—but the man’s acquiescing to the demands, mutely, without any volatile reaction at all.

His brow furrows. His mouth twists. There’s a kicked puppy look to the man’s face, which is almost unfairly noble in structure. Did he save some grieving prince? Hua casts a slightly suspicious look past his ceiling to the heavens, like _they’re_ apt to have him accidentally ruin some legendary romance.

Ah, well.

“What’s your name?” Hua asks the stranger, a little brusquely. He’s not used to tempering his manners. Never has been. It’s gotten him in a lot of trouble with the House, and that’s not even including the number of times he’d accidentally set fire to their refuge while in a fit.

-0-

“Captain—” Jin grimaces. “Not Captain. I’m Jin.” He sees Hua tense where he’s knelt on the floor, coaxing a fire to life with flint and steel, but he also sees Hua visibly _untense_. That makes him perk up. This isn’t just a hermit. This is a man who’s got something against the law. “Call me Jin?”

“Is that a request or the question of a man who can’t decide anything?” grumbles the hermit. The candidness of the man’s bad temper distracts Jin from—whatever. Anyway. The man’s interesting to look at. Clean-shaven. Serious. Kind of sullen.

“Call me Jin,” Jin repeats, interest turning his tone into cheerful insolence. He shivers out of his soaked layers, leaves on a wrap to preserve his modesty, and pads over to crouch near the fire.

And the hermit proceeds to startle out of his wits, jumping away from Jin’s mostly-naked body with a low, bitten-off curse. The fire jumps too. It swirls up into something like a column, and Jin can’t help but look at it and think: _him too_.

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**Author's Note:**

> So upon further reflection, the universe here resembles a lot more like Naruto, down to the elemental natures. Either way I'm going to summarize the powers:
> 
> Jin: civilian. no powers. he's the sokka, I told you guys this already  
> Mei: main - wind, secondary - ice. I literally fridged her, shit, oh god, uhhh the future is either a true fix-it or a revival of mei.  
> Liu (Mis-subbed as Leo): main - wind. if you're in hfd, you basically have wind powers of varying qualities.  
> Hua: main - fire.


End file.
